Ferguson could easily have explained away the decision to leave Ferdinand out of his 18-man party – and much more convincingly than trying to claim Rooney’s exclusion against his former club was in order to spare him an afternoon of acerbic abuse – by simply citing the defender’s lack of fitness.

Yet Ferguson’s admission, barely half an hour after seeing his side succumb to an Everton fightback that had to be seen to be believed, that Ferdinand will make his senior return following the knee injury that ruined his World Cup against Glasgow Rangers tomorrow was revealing in itself.

For someone who was once thrown straight into a game against Liverpool the moment his eight-month ban for missing a drugs test was lifted, it says everything about Ferdinand’s current fortunes that a 45-minute run-out for the reserves against Oldham 10 days previously was not enough to ensure he featured in a game Ferguson labelled beforehand as always being “a bloody nightmare”.

Rangers will pose an altogether more comfortable comeback. But this is Ferdinand, presumably champing at the bit after three months out, not some wet-behind-the-ears rookie. It is not even as if United can easily do without him.

Their last away game at Fulham revealed a sloppy side to their make-up with the chance to push the game out of reach wasted and then being punished with a late equaliser.

That underlying weakness was also duly exploited by Everton, with goals in injury time from Tim Cahill and Mikel Arteta to memorably kick-start their campaign.

This is a pivotal season for Ferdinand after the aches and ailments that restricted his appearances last season and he must prove he can be as active in a red shirt as he invariably is on Twitter, if Ferguson’s patience is not to be tested.

He must take responsibility off the pitch as well as on it and, as a senior figure in the dressing room, see that the focus shifts to United creating headlines for the right reasons.

If the United manager’s praise for the progress being made by summer recruit Chris Smalling recently does not serve as a timely jolt to Ferdinand, then perhaps this will. In that sense, England captain Ferdinand had much in common on Saturday with Rooney. The explanation that Ferguson did not want to subject his striking talisman to 90 minutes of merciless barracking on the back of the allegations swirling around his private life was flimsy at best.

Rooney has run the gauntlet six times since his acrimonious departure in 2004 and the vitriol has mellowed through time.

The sighting of a blow-up doll on the Gwladys Street End suggested the nature of the harassment he would have received would have been more light-hearted than open hatred.

And if Rooney’s omission was down to Ferguson’s feeling that he had to make a point about the manner in which United players behave, then seeing two others ultimately slip through his grasp in a frantic finale is the price he has to pay.

The pinpoint crossing of Nani and the exquisite passing of Paul Scholes saw United respond to Steven Pienaar’s opener for Everton with goals from Darren Fletcher, Nemanja Vidic and Dimitar Berbatov. Yet despite what had been an underwhelming start to the campaign, this is the season when Everton will underline the quality that courses through their squad by challenging the natural order.

They have talent in abundance in the likes of Pienaar and Arteta and the confidence this result will imbue will coax even more out of them.

“If I’d lost 3-1 I think I would have still come out and said my team hadn’t deserved to be on the end of a defeat like that,” said Moyes. “We have got good players, a good team.

“We’re a little bit short in some areas maybe of being right at the top, but we’ll be a game for anybody who comes here and I reckon we’ll be a game for anybody wherever we go.”